Forming New Perspective: How These 4 Virtues are Changing How I Perceive Conflict
I’ve come to reconcile a deeper meaning to these four virtues — understanding, forgiveness, grace and compassion. Each, when understood in relationship to the self, to the other and to the all helps me to face adversity rather than run away from it. The hedonists approach is to chase pleasure and avoid pain, I have learned to live comfortably here. And yet I’ve come to experience life only half full, living from only one side of the coin. There are lessons in pain, and these lessons have helped me unlock those universal virtues that bring me in deeper communion to the magic and mystery of life. No longer half full, my glass is brimming with the richness and deep yearning to know God. And for it be these virtues — understanding, forgiveness, grace, and compassion — that bridge the gap to experiencing the true pleasure, true heaven here on earth.
While meditating on the heart, I saw situations arise in my mind’s eye that left me feeling dis-eased. I craved resolve, and resolve came. What was asked of me was to deepen my understanding of my pattern of perception. How I perceive these events is from the eyes of a child still developing, from the mind of a youth who believed the world to be rigidly established towards dysfunction. The safest solution was always to run, avoid, and forget. And yet, as I yearn in earnest intensity to know a personal God, to experience His Presence, I must face in honest observance those pained moments that birthed my growth of perception. To know God is to cultivate virtues, because God is All Virtuous. And be it so, facing pained memories was how He could get me to seek His Love over worldly pleasure. I swell with gratitude to realize His design for me.
I watched these two situations unfold, very different in execution, and yet at the heart they both were the same. What was being asked of me to create reconciliation is to understand understanding, forgiveness, grace, and compassion not from the thinking mind, but from a Source that I can only describe as God. Let’s start with understanding.
Understanding is to perceive all sides of a situation. Hone into details and zoom out to perceive it from a peripheral view. Understand that God dwells within the self, within other, and within all things. To understand God’s Presence in this way allows for me to see that God is working in all situations, through all people and all things.
Forgiveness. Because I understand that God dwells in all things, I seek forgiveness from the God within all. I do not seek approval, there in-lies the difference. When I have understood that I’ve wronged due only to ignorance or fear, then I seek to reconcile my actions through the genuine asking of forgiveness. I need not go to the person I believe I have created wrong with and ask their forgiveness, I ask the God that dwells within them for forgiveness. I ask the God within my self, that has done wrong due to ignorance or fear for forgiveness. God knows All and seeking His forgiveness, I am maintaining my communion with God and seeking His Righteousness.
Grace. Grace is Loving Kindness. By understanding that God dwells within self, within other, and within all things, then I can reconcile that grace dwells here too. Grace is a mighty force that soothes even the hottest of tempers; it’s a maintained cooling neutral. The energy of grace is one I’ve personally been cultivating and meeting other and all things with. Giving grace back to the self whilst examining past pains has been difficult, but from this new perspective I can understand that even in those pained memories, grace exists. Grace is the hand of the Higher Self gently rocking my troubled mind to sleep. Grace are the gentle words that I feed myself after giving space for my pained self to say her peace. Grace is the space that allows God to come in and mend my broken heart. Finding grace in situations is understanding my part in creating the dis-ease, aligning consciousness to those qualities of Loving-Kindness and offering space for God to Be. Most times in my experience of conflict, space has been the ultimate healer. Within silence, all solutions can be found.
And finally we come to compassion, reconciling that suffering is intrinsic of human nature. We cannot escape the inevitability that to be human is to error. This is how we learn and grow and evolve. We are messy, reactive, passionate creatures that care deeply for the things we care deeply about. One ruffled feather and we’re set off, projecting our inner landscape onto the world and onto those we come into contact with. Feelings get hurt. We judge and form opinions. It’s the way of things. Believing differently, as I tried very hard to do, landed me isolated, anxious, and lonely. Striving for perfection only took me further from compassion, further from my own humanness and from finding connection with others. Accepting the humanness in humanity is at the very heart of compassion, and it is a Godly virtue for a reason. If we all can’t learn to get along, we aren’t going to make it on this earth. Compassion is what unites us, brother and sister together, we are the same because we suffer and we are the same because God dwells in all beings. Both must be realized for compassion to be actualized.
There you have it, from the spiritual mind, the meditative mind, new thoughts forming new perspectives on the four virtues — understanding, forgiveness, grace and compassion. Have a think from the heart, what do these four virtues mean to you?
